Arrest may be lead in Tinley Park case

February 14, 2008|By Chicago Tribune

A man bearing a close resemblance to a sketch of the gunman in the Lane Bryant store slayings was arrested in Chicago on an unrelated charge and was questioned about the Tinley Park case, officials said Wednesday.

Tinley Park officials were not calling the man a suspect but acknowledged the arrest was being treated as a lead in the Feb. 2 quintuple slaying at Lane Bryant.

Members of the U.S. Marshals' Fugitive Task Force picked up the man about 11 p.m. Tuesday from a home near Cicero Avenue and Division Street and turned him over to local authorities, a law enforcement source said.

The source said authorities, who were seeking the man for violating parole, noticed his photograph closely resembled a composite sketch of the man sought in the Lane Bryant killings.

"They picked him up and they said, 'Hey, maybe there's some connection.' I don't know what led them to think that," Tinley Park Mayor Ed Zabrocki said. He said the man was not in the custody of the Tinley Park Police Department or the South Suburban Major Crimes Task Force.

Zabrocki said he believed task force detectives interviewed the man, but the mayor downplayed the significance. " [Investigators] are just doing their due diligence with this."

But asked if the man had been excluded as a suspect, Zabrocki said, "Not by any stretch of the imagination. They're checking it out."

Also on Wednesday, lawyers for the family of Connie Woolfolk, one of the customers killed, obtained a court order that directs store and mall officials and law enforcement agencies to preserve videotapes and other evidence for a possible wrongful death lawsuit.

The gunman is described as African-American, 25 to 35 years old, with thick cornrows and a slim braid decorated with green beads along the right side of his face, 5 foot 9 to 6 feet, 200 to 230 pounds with broad shoulders and a husky build.